Rachid Don't Like It

Inside the mind and music of international man of mystery Rachid Taha.


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Published: Jul 2, 2008

CASBAH CADABRA: Taha is a star in France.

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Fame in the U.S. has been slow coming for Rachid Taha, but in France he's been on the scene so long he is bordering on eminence grise. Or at least Dylanesque folk hero status. For the young and hiply liberal French kids and their Franco-Arabic pals, Taha — with his mandolute (picture a fretted oud) — is a symbol of questions raised by the inspired mixing of popular music from around the world.

A local eminence in the Philly Arabic-American community, who prefers to remain nameless, felt compelled to see Taha on his last pass through town. The verdict: "He spent a whole lot of time jamming and bringing the crowd up to dance with him — so he wouldn't have to work."

Cue the YouTube clip where Taha's in Finland, early 2007. He collapses to his knees, looking like a tribute to James Brown's robe 'n' crown routine. Surely, we think, that's it, as musicians shuffle over to his prostrate form, bending over him, digging into their strings to revive him. Nice try on their part. It takes a roadie to get under Taha's pits and prop him back on his wobbling feet. There's more, but I'll let that be a surprise.

The man looks better in professional videos, like the ones for "Rock el Casbah." Reworking that Clash song, with lyrics translated to Arabic, drew many new fans to Taha's highly original recombinations of Arabic strings and drums, with traditional rhythms and slamming western beats and guitars. When he won the BBC's world music award, Middle Eastern division, earlier this year, Joe Strummer's widow was the guest presenter. If you've missed that, you may know another of Taha's hits, "Barra Barra" from Black Hawk Down.

Taha is known for giving reporters a hard time. He was in the studio when we spoke, and I swear, though my French is admittedly weak, he promised me that the new CD would not only mix Arabic and French and English, but even introduce some country. Why not? Over the years he has mixed Bo Diddly-style guitar with Celtic flute, Lakota-style flute lines played by didgeridoo, reggae next to raï and snatches of surf guitar. But when I teased him about naming his pedal steel player on the country track(s), he said: "Haven't gotten that far yet."

What about banjo? "Banjo!" he cried, "We've been using that in North Africa for years." Not the four-string African precursor to banjo, but the Earl Scruggs five-string kind, as left behind by some GI during the North African campaign of World War II, or so Taha alleged.

Other answers were straight-up. No, he didn't study traditional Arabic music. Yes he's completely self-taught, so whatever styles he uses in his compositions are all old-school oral tradition.

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Born in Algeria, Taha moved to France with the family as a lad. The shock of catching hell from others in the new communities, just for where he was born, informed Taha's music from his first efforts with a punk-influenced Franco-Arab group, Carte de Séjour (which means "visitor's permit" — think green card). One of their early hits, which drew equal parts praise and furor, was an ironic rendering of "Douce France" — a sweet love-of-country ditty, widely popularized by crooner Charles Trenet. Take the same words, let them start plaintively, cue the dumbek and oud, then on the chorus here comes the deliberately punkish out-of-tune voices over beatbox. And how can you not wince at the line about "Sweet France ... my village ... where all the kids of my age shared my happiness." It's not angry, just matter-of-fact, which might've been worse for the guilty consciences who cried sacrilege.

Now Taha lives in Paris, but surprisingly not in the chic arrondisement where an international star might easily buy a flat. Too expensive for his taste. He prefers to live in one of the banlieues, the same outskirts where riots were brewing and cars were burning a few years back. No, he wasn't there when all that took place, but he insisted it's no big deal. "Ce n'est pas grave," he said.

Must be true or he wouldn't stay. Ethnic solidarity is not his bag, if we are to believe the Algerian daily el Watan, in which the writer assigned to interview Taha complains bitterly of jumping through hoops for an interview that never came to pass. El Watan cries that Taha is not the first Algerian artist to forget his origins once he got a taste for fortune and fame. But music has the power to sway even the hatingest hater. Having gotten that off his chest, the critic went on to praise Taha's originality and his stubborn insistence on airing unpleasant truths. Hope he doesn't mind reading about them, as well.

(m_armstrong@citypaper.net)

Thu., July 10, 7:30 p.m., $20, Kimmel Center, 260 S. Broad St., 215-893-1999, kimmelcenter.org.